


Fall Into the Sky

by velvetcadence



Category: Starfighter (Comic)
Genre: Abel is a Geek, Alternate Universe - High School, Cain is a Jock, Fluff, M/M, Makeover, Slice of Life, possessive!Cain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-09
Updated: 2013-09-09
Packaged: 2017-12-26 02:16:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/960396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/velvetcadence/pseuds/velvetcadence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abel's in love with a boy that makes his heart hurt. He figures that he'll probably spend the rest of his high school career pining away. What he doesn't know is that Cain has been looking back all along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fall Into the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Written sooooo long ago. Gave it a pat-on-the-butt ending and decided to share it with you guys. Hope you like it! I wasn't able to add the other characters because at the time of writing, they hadn't come out in the comic yet.

Abel is a year younger than most of his classmates, small, skinny and delicate-looking. Academically, he’s topping the class. Socially, he’s invisible and would rather stay that way.

Cain is a member of the football team, is dating a dumb blond, and his high school career couldn’t be better. He’s six feet tall and walks with a grace that says he’s settled into his limbs. It’s a large contrast to the other teenagers who’ve only begun to stretch and curve, who are awkward and gangly in their new bodies.

“Oi. Careful,” Were the first words Cain’s ever said to Abel, after the freshman had tripped over nothing and into Cain’s chest. Abel can still remember the way Cain’s hand had settled on his shoulder to steady him, warm and heavy.

“Sorry.” Abel blushed, his eyelashes fluttering in surprise.

“Huh.” And there was something there that Abel hadn’t anticipated, a spark in Cain’s eye, but Abel might have been too breathless with want to interpret it properly and only saw what he wanted to see. Cain’s hand falls away and he goes without saying anything else.

Abel stays there, awestruck in the middle of the hall despite the irritation of the crowd around him.

-

They don’t talk after that. Of course they don’t. Cain barely knows Abel’s name, let alone that he exists. But he’s good for him in the way that first-loves are. Abel’s day instantly brightens when he spots Cain in the mornings. Their lockers are not too far from each other, and Abel has installed a mirror on the inside of his to track Cain’s movements discreetly. It’s vaguely stalker-ish, but Abel can’t bring himself to stop.

Never mind that Cain has strings of girlfriends he never keeps more than four weeks. Abel knows that they are transient, insignificant, so it doesn’t bother him so much. Cain remains his perfect, handsome self, all leather jackets and self-satisfied smirks despite the multitude of girls who want to reform his bad-boy attitude.

And Abel? Abel remains himself too, but just a bit better, just a little more driven. He imagines being propelled into an advanced class and ten feet away from Cain every day, watching the long lean line of his back bent over his notes. Maybe if he had the guts, he would ask Cain to help him with his homework, and spend the next few minutes side-by-side on a table in the library.

If anybody knew Abel well enough to ask why the sudden inspiration in his school work, well, he’d never tell.

-

Autumn fades to winter fades to spring. Before Abel knows it, it’s the end of freshman year and a whole ten months of longing for a boy he doesn’t know. The year ends on a tepid note, the last morning of the last day watching Cain in the mirror on his locker. There’s a rigidness to Cain’s shoulders that’s unusual, and a stiffness to his gait that shouldn’t be there. The hall is sparse of people; it’s early yet.

Cain curses as things spill from his locker like vomit, a riotous mess of pens and paper. Abel glances around and goes to help him.

“Thanks,” Cain says reluctantly. Abel’s ecstatic. He’s slightly shaking. He thinks, _God, he’s tall_.

“No problem. Um,” Abel clumsily reaches in his bag for a Tupperware of homemade cookies. “Would you like one?”

Cain looks at him, quietly shrewd before he shrugs at the offering. Abel thinks it’s another thing that sets Cain apart, how he just stops and stares like he’s trying to look through you. “Looks good. But I better get to class.” He shuts his locker gently and adjusts the strap of his backpack. “See ya.”

“Bye,” Abel whispers. His mind says, _hate to see you go, but love to watch you leave_. Oh, how Abel loves to watch Cain leave.

-

Abel grows five more inches over the summer and spends his days at the beach with his parents at their summer villa. He tries to get a tan. It doesn’t work. All he does is turn red and peel the sunburn after a few days, and the shade darker he turns isn’t noticeable at all. The sun bleaches his hair and the constant swimming leaves his muscles lean and limber though. It’s the most exercise he’s had in a while, and it feels good. He wonders if this is what Cain feels when he stretches after football practice, this sweet singing in his body after it’s been used and pushed properly.

It’s still Cain, after all these months, although Abel’s not sure now whether he’s in love with the boy or the idea he’s made of him.

That night, he dreams of tracing the smirk on Cain’s lips.

-

Sophomore year arrives with a degree of awkwardness. People are noticing Abel now that he’s gotten contact lenses, a better hairstyle and better-fitting clothes. His personality is still the same but his attitude’s changed. He likes how he looks, and he appreciates the second glances they pass him by. The girls nudge themselves and titter about when he shoots them a shy smile.

Is this how Cain feels like? He wonders. He rather likes it.

Cain’s just dropped a pen when Abel walks by and picks it up. He blinks at Abel like he’s never seen him before, pausing in that characteristic way of his, calculating.

“Hi. You dropped this.” Abel says, and his voice is lower than it usually is, almost husky.

“Hey.”

There’s a moment when Cain’s gaze drops from Abel’s eyes to his lips, a moment when the air is so thick and Cain is so near that Abel can smell his cologne and feel his body heat.

“Cain!”

Abel jerks to himself, regressing back a year, to the thirteen-year old in the baggy sweaters hiding behind his glasses. There’s a cheerleader pressing her chest against Cain’s, sticking her glossed lips over Cain’s cheekbone.

“Get off, Lila. I’m not your boyfriend anymore.”

“Oh my god, I’m just like, trying to be nice. A-hole.”

“You too, sweetheart. Go rub your tits against Coach, I bet she’d love that.”

“Would she?”

“Probably make you head cheerleader if you asked nicely.”

The girl walks away with a contemplative look on her face. Meanwhile, Cain stands there, leaning against his locker and smiling ironically.

“Why do you date them?” Abel asks, shocked and maybe jealous. A little.

“Who?”

“Those, those bubbleheads.”

“Bubbleheads?” Cain laughs. “Haven’t heard that one before.”

Abel flushes, leaning against the metal behind him, copying Cain’s pose subconsciously. Cain watches this with interest, assessing. “I just don’t get it. Why waste your time with them?”

“What do you want me to say? They’re easy.”

“…That’s it?”

“What else is there?”

“I dunno. I’ve never dated before.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. No one’s ever looked.”

Cain’s eyes go half-lidded. “I’m sure that’s not true. Why’d you think that?”

To this Abel doesn’t have an answer. He’s not too sure why he’s here in the first place. “I better get to class.” It’s too strange here. He’s wanted Cain’s eyes on him since that first day and now that he has them, he isn’t sure what to do with himself. He feels like floating, so out-of-depth.

“’Kay.” Cain says nonchalantly, ruffling Abel’s hair as he passes by. “See you around.”

The first bell rings. Abel moves his feet, but his head’s still stuck in the stars.

-

It’s easier to talk to Cain like this. With the new look, it’s easier to feel less like an imposition on Cain’s perfect world and more of an addition to it.

The cookies help. Abel offers every morning before class until Cain relents and takes one, still warm.

“Mmmm…fuck.” Cain moans around a mouthful of chewy chocolate chip. The sound makes Abel’s ears heat and his mind race with fantastic improbabilities. “God, fuck…so good.”

“C-Cain.”

“Gimme more of that. Shit, why didn’t you tell me I was missing out on this?”

“I-I did!” Abel stammers as Cain grabs another cookie from the Tupperware in his hand.

“Mmmmyfuckinggod…”

“Yo, Cain! Who’s giving you a blowjob and when can I meet her?” One of Cain’s jock friends booms, and several heads down the hallway look up towards them.

“Fuck off, man, you’ll never have her!” Cain announces, raising the cookie in his hand like a priest would at Holy Communion. Abel would be flattered if he weren’t so embarrassed.

Cain’s friend snags the cookie and puts the whole thing in his mouth. It’s like an orgasm in his mouth, the way his eyes light up and his cheeks flush. Abel coughs and looks away. Obviously, this is an intimate moment between jocks and their cookies.

And Abel is not going down that road, not thinking about Cain manipulating himself over a bowl of sticky cookie dough and making obscene noises.

“Christ, I think I just died and gone to heaven.” Jock-friend says. “Who made these things? And where is she?”

“Umm…hi.” Abel says. “You like them? T-Thanks.”

“You made these? _You_ made these?” The jock’s nose flares, and for a moment Abel is terrified he’ll be pounded into the floor. What Cain’s friend does is to propose instead. “Marry me. Your cookies are amazing.”

Abel pales, and it’s not until Cain’s arm winds around his waist and pulls him back does he collect himself. “Um...”

“Pretty please?”

“Um.”

“Fuck off, man. I found him first. Abel and his delicious cookies are mine.” Cain snarls.

Abel mutters, “Now that’s just obscene.”

Cain’s friend laughs and steps back, putting his hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay, I get it. Wait ‘til the guys hear about this.”

“Fuck you, bro.” Cain says. He has yet to let go of Abel, and it feels exquisite.

-

Abel wins the heart of Cain’s clique of jocks and cool-type kids this way. The cheerleaders cannot be conquered by their stomachs since pastries are fattening, apparently, but Abel has just enough similarities between a cute puppy and a rainbow that they’ve adopted him as one of their own.

“So, like, I think you should get a shirt this shade of blue. Makes your eyes pop out.” Lila prattles off. Abel would have hated the girl if she wasn’t so likable. Even if she sounded like a twat. “Don’t want you to look too washed out. You’re a summer aren’t you? You look like a summer. I’m a winter myself, even if I really like fall colors better.”

It’s like she’s speaking another language.

“…but seriously, though, try to look cute for Friday ‘cause it’s the game, you know? You gotta make sure everyone knows you’re there to support your boyfriend. And then Saturday, it’s the party, you gotta look hot then, so that everybody knows what a lucky bastard Cain is and how you make him your bitch with your ‘mmmmmyfuckinggod cookies’.”

“Cain isn’t—does he really call them that?”

“Sure does, hon. I think everyone does, but no one gets the voice pat-down like your boytoy. Everybody’s all like, ‘Oh look, Abel’s cookies’ but Cain is more like, ‘MmmmyfuckingGOD, Abel’s COOKIES’. Whipped. Not only that, he’s like, super-whipped. I would have made him cookies all the time, except I would have like, set the house on fire, you know?”

“…Right?”

“Right. So like, I dunno. I just find it nice that he’s dating you and all. You’re a nice kid. Cain needs more niceness in his life. His life is like, not so nice.”

“Oh.”

“And like, you look so adorable together! Gosh, I kind of want to see you kiss. It’s like, my secret wet dream. Did you know I used to like-like you before when you were still a freshie? Cain used to talk about you all the time, so I didn’t mind it that much since I liked you too, but it kind of got awkward after. But like, it’s cool now. We’re cool. Right?”

“Right.” Abel grins at her, finally developing a Lila-filter in his brain that translated the gibberish coming out of her mouth. “Cain liked me since before?”

“Oh my gosh, like, if you didn’t know him, you wouldn’t have noticed, but that’s Cain for you. Always trying to look cool, but he’s a total mushball. You should see the way he looks at you, OMG, like, so adorbs.”

-

If anyone asks, Abel will say that he is a certified Mathlete, complete with the dorky jacket. Still, some concepts are beyond him, like senior-level trigonometry when he is only supposed to be a freshman at his age. Instead, he is in his second year of high school, sitting across the most handsome boy in school at the kitchen table and getting frustrated at the homework his advanced class is giving him.

“Hmm?” Cain murmurs, distracted at his poetry assignment.

“How do you fucking solve the fucking height of a fucking tree if you look at it at a thirty-eight degree angle forty feet from the base? Why don’t you just measure the fucking height if you have time to solve for the fucking _angle_ of elevation?”

Cain cocks his head, and his outright stare makes Abel flush with the remnants of his rage and incoming embarrassment both. Cain’s mouth quirks into a smirk, and he finger-combs his hair back. “Someone sounds like he needs sugar in his system,” he sing-songs.

 “That is totally not the point!”

“Chill, babe. Here, let me see that.”

Abels sighs in defeat and slides his half-mutilated piece of paper across the table, swiping Cain’s homework from under the other boy’s arm. Cain rolls his eyes but doesn’t object, grabbing a pencil and trying to solve around Abel’s cramped scribbles.

“Oh, you’re studying Cummings. I like that guy.”

“I like his name,” Cain snorts in amusement. “Just that. His poetry’s shit.”

“Only ‘cause you don’t understand it. _’Pity this busy monster manunkind not’_ ,” Abel reads, and scans Cain’s essay. “You missed the whole point of it. It’s a critique on humanity.”

“Wow, not sure how I missed that. This guy’s clearly nuts. Who says ‘bigness’ and ‘littleness’ anyway? Those aren’t even words.”

“He made new words to emphasize his ideas. It’s actually very…”

“Blech.”

“You hate poetry just because you can’t understand it.”

“You hate trig just because you can’t tell the difference between a cosecant and a cosine.”

Abel gasps exaggeratedly. “You take that back.”

“Make me.”

Abel mock-glares at him and grabs the cookie jar. Cain’s eyes flash. In a heartbeat they’re set in a mad chase about the mansion (“It’s an effing castle,” Cain complained the first time he’d been here.)

“Abel, give me back my cookies!”

“They were mine before they were yours!”

“But you made them for meeeee!”

“I take them back!”

“But! Cookies!”

As luck would have it, Abel trips over his mother’s plush Persian rug in one of the sitting rooms. The jar jabs him in the ribs, and he lets it roll away from him, too tired from the exertion. He lets himself lie on his back, chest slightly heaving, palms up, legs parted. Cain finds him like this, soon after, and Abel watches him as he gets to his knees and crawls on top of him.

“What are you doing?” Abel asks, breathless not just from running.

Cain doesn’t say anything, just drags his gaze from Abel’s eyes to his lips, so much like the first day of this school year. “Can I kiss you?”

Abel scarcely finds his voice before Cain’s lips are pressed against his. It’s slow and heavy with no particular intention, just feeling, weighing the moment, wading through it like molasses. Someone makes a noise, Abel isn’t sure who, but his hands find themselves cradling Cain’s face. Cain’s thumb is pressing against the pulse against his throat and it’s wonderful.

“Finally,” Cain says. “I thought we’d never get anywhere.”

“I thought—you didn’t—you should have said something! I thought you were straight!”

“Jesus Christ, Abel. For a smart guy, you’re kind of an idiot sometimes.”

Abel punches him on the chest. Because that is what Cain is, a total bastard with no regard for the way he makes Abel feel like a schoolgirl with a crush. “I thought you were leading me on.”

“What? No way! I’ve been waiting for you to make the first move, you stupid psycho.”

“And I’d been hoping you’d say something when people started calling me your boyfriend.”

“But you are my boyfriend,” Cain protests. Pauses. Thinks. Breathes. “Aren’t you?”

“I didn’t know until now,” Abel whines, “Since you never said anything. Or did anything.”

Cain was incredulous. “I thought it was obvious.”

“Not to me. I’m new at this.”

“How could you not tell?” Cain demands. “I call you ‘babe’ and bring you to class. We go on dates. Study dates, even. You feed me cookies.”

“I thought you were sarcastic. And I didn’t know they were dates. I thought we were just. Hanging out. And that you were tutoring me because I feed you cookies.” Abel wishes the ground would swallow him up so he wouldn’t have to face this. This is humiliating, finding out that the object of his affections, the one that had been dangled in front of him for ages had actually been with him already, and he was too stupid to realize it.

“We’re kind of bad at this, aren’t we?” Cain says, and he’s gentle as he turns Abel’s cheek with his hand, brushing the sun-bleached hair out of his eyes.

Abel takes a breath and meets Cain’s gaze. He says, “For what it’s worth, you’re a great kisser,” and surges up to press their lips together.

-

Abel isn’t sure how this is his life. His boyfriend (his boyfriend, good God, he’s dating somebody, he’s dating _Cain_ ) is waiting for him outside the door by the time his class is dismissed. This isn’t so unusual except that now, Cain wraps a tentative hand around Abel’s wrist, seeking permission. Abel flushes and looks away, but he slides his hand until their fingers are slotted perfectly together. They take their time within the human traffic towards the cafeteria, staying close together but keeping quiet, not for any awkwardness but because the newness feels sacred.

Nobody bothers them on the whole, except for one or two curious glances, and even then, everybody else has had time to accept that Cain and Abel were both an item.

They take their usual spot within their circle of friends. Odd how exactly a year ago Abel wouldn’t have been able to hold a conversation with any of these people. Now he sits with them at lunch every day, laughing at their jokes and sharing his food. And really, how could Abel not have noticed how close he and Cain sat beside each other, shoulder to shoulder every day without realizing that it was definitely more than platonic? It’s so apparent by the way Cain easily slips his arm around Abel’s shoulders, and how Abel leans in instinctively.

Someone at the far end of the table wolf-whistles. “Get a room, you two! I’m losing my lunch over here! Ow!”

“Oh my god, like, shut up. They are so adorbs! Get over it.”

“This okay?” Cain whispers into Abel’s hair.

“Yeah.” Abel whispers back, just as Lila begins to squeal, “Now kiss!”

-

Friday. Game day. Abel understands the basic mechanics of football but he can’t quite understand what makes these people cheer so raucously. He’s sitting between two classmates who are avidly watching, and he’d be lying to himself if he said he isn't distracted by the way Cain’s uniform clings to his thighs.

Abel snaps out of it when the team dogpile into a mass of flailing male limbs. He recovers enough sense to go running down the bleachers and onto the grass so he can share the victory with Cain.

His boyfriend catches him with a wild whoop, hefting him easily off his feet and into his arms. After two years of this, it still feels new every time Cain looks at him like that. “Hey,” he says, but it sounds more like _I love you_.

“Hi,” Abel grins, feeling his eyes crinkle with joy. Around them people are celebrating the win, but Abel barely spares them a thought.


End file.
